[[quoteright:222:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/perfume-book-cover_8420.jpg]][[caption-width-right:222:[[labelnote:Click here to see the film poster]]http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/perfume_8004.jpg[[/labelnote]]]]

->''"The soul of beings is their scent."''-->-- '''Jean-Baptiste Grenouille'''

A 1985 [[LitFic Gothic novel]] by Patrick Süskind, ''Perfume: The Story of a Murderer'' (or ''Das Parfum. Die Geschichte eines Mörders'' in the original German) tells the story of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, an orphan and a sociopath born into 18th century France. It turns out that Grenouille has an extraordinary sense of smell, but, curiously, he himself has no body odour.

Fittingly enough he becomes a perfumer, eagerly learning various methods to extract the smell from all kinds of things. It is then when he decides to create the most perfect perfume ever by capturing the scents of beautiful virgin girls, a [[{{Glamour}} fragrance so intoxicating]] that [[LoveIsInTheAir all who smell it]] will [[MoreThanMindControl feel like]] they've gone to heaven. Of course, Grenouille has to keep this noble artistic vision a secret from society, as extracting a girl's scent requires killing her. (Clearly this story would have been much tamer if it were told in an era where tranquilisers were easily accessed.)

It was adapted into a 2006 film: ''Perfume: The Story of a Murderer'', directed by Tom Tykwer, most known for his film ''Film/RunLolaRun''. The film stars Creator/BenWhishaw as Grenouille; Creator/DustinHoffman as Baldini, the perfumer who teaches him the basics of the trade; Rachel Hurd-Wood as Laura Richis, an imperilled young lady in Grenouille's sights; and Actor/AlanRickman as Antoine Richis, Laura's protective father. The film was a flop in America, but was actually a pretty big hit worldwide, and a certified blockbuster in Germany.----!!The book and film ''Perfume'' provide examples of:

* AnimalsHateHim: Subverted: The watchdog ignores Grenouille because he has no scent.* ArrangedMarriage: Laura is arranged to be married by her father to a wealthy, handsome, and apparently loving man. She's apprehensive about the arrangement.* {{Asexuality}}: Grenouille has no interest in sex, at least not as we know it. He gains all his pleasures from scents. In the film he seems to have some attraction to the Plum Girl (and, by association, [[ReplacementGoldfish Laura]]) but that could also be scent based. * AuthorAppeal: Both authour Süskind and director Tykwer seem to have a thing for redheads.* TheBadGuyWins: [[spoiler:Subverted. Grenouille kills Laura, creates his perfume, and escapes execution. However, he finds that his perfume doesn't grant him happiness. He resolves to kill himself instead.]]* BeautyEqualsGoodness: Grenouille is unattractive and a murderer. In the book Grenouille is a deformed, troll-like man, while in the movie he's HollywoodHomely. The beautiful virgins are all, apparently, virtuous. * BeneathNotice: Grenouille, due to his lack of scent.* BookDumb: Grenouille is quite intelligent, but was raised as a tanner's apprentice and has no education.* ColdBloodedTorture: After Grenouille is captured, he's suspended upside down and his head is dipped into water for periods of time. He is also sentenced to be publicly tortured before execution.* CrapsackWorld: [[TheDungAges Literally so.]] Eighteenth-century France is portrayed as a disease-ridden, scandalously unequal, war-torn and violent society where whole swathes of the population are not even considered legal persons. The individual plots of ''every single person'' are utterly void of a positive ending.* DamselInDistress: Laura Richis is helpless against Grenouille and must be locked in her room for protection.* {{Determinator}}: The narrator emphasizes Grenouille's great will to survive through a childhood that would have killed most others. In the book, he is described as a tick, enduring through the harshness.* DevouredByTheHorde: At the very end, [[spoiler: Grenouille, saddened that his perfect perfume cannot create love, uses it to kill himself. As he approaches a group of beggars, he dumps all of the remaining perfume on himself. The beggars are so enchanted by his smell that they swarm him and rip him to pieces.]] * DisposableSexWorker: In the book, Grenouille tries to distill the scent of animals, but they are all too afraid as he handles them; only when he entices a puppy with a piece of meat, then kills it while it's still distracted, can he apply animal fat and create a perfume so convincing that the puppy's mother won't keep her nose out of the bottle it's kept in. In the film, rather than subject the audience to the horror of killing a puppy, Grenouille is instead shown murdering a weirded-out prostitute and using the resultant perfume to fool her abandoned (anachronistic) shi tzu.* DoomMagnet: [[spoiler:Everyone who takes care of Grenouille dies soon after he leaves them. The only exception is Madame Gaillard (in the book) - her problem is that she lives much longer than she wanted to.]]* DrivenToSuicide: [[spoiler:Grenouille realizes that he'll be Lonely At The Top, and has no other reason to live.]]* DropDeadGorgeous: Grenouille dumps the naked bodies of his young, beautiful victims haphazardly throughout the city. Also present in the film poster on this page. After watching the film, it becomes more clear that the woman pictured is dead.* TheDungAges: The slums of 18th century France are a filthy and disgusting place. The book and film go into particular length about the foul odors. In the book, Grenouille's mother is described as "relatively handsome", meaning here that she's still some teeth left in her mouth and some hair on her head, no diseases except syphilis, gout and a slight case of tuberculosis, and expects to live for a long time - five or even ten years. Parisians were banned from expanding outside the city walls, and the filth, pollution and overcrowding were a major contributor to the French Revolution. On the other hand, the countryside and wealthy parts of France are portrayed as [[SceneryPorn quite gorgeous]]. * DyingAlone: Inverted with Madame Gaillard in the book, who runs the orphanage where Grenouille was raised. She collects money so she could die alone in her own home, instead of a public hospital. However, she doesn't die soon enough, in UsefulNotes/TheFrenchRevolution her money becomes worthless, and she dies in the way she was trying to avoid in her whole life: crammed into a hospital bed with several other women, and then buried in a mass grave. * EmotionBomb: The perfect perfume. [[spoiler:Grenouille uses the emotional effects of the perfume to get the entire city's population to universally declare him innocent of murder. Even Antoine Richis succumbs once he draws within arm's reach.]]* EnfantTerrible: Grenouille in his youth.* EvilDetectingDog: Averted in the movie; thanks to Grenouille lack of scent, he steps right over a sleeping dog as he's sneaking up to Laura's bedroom, without the dog sounding the alarm.* EvilRedhead: Grenouille, [[AdaptationDyeJob in the book at least]].* FinalGirl: [[spoiler:Subverted. Laura is teased as the one girl to survive Grenouille's murderous plot, to the point that he hesitates when he finally has her in his grasp... but he still kills her.]]* FirstGirlWins: The Plum Girl, the first victim, is the one that makes the most lasting impression on Grenouille and is what starts him on his quest. The only other girl to make much of an impression is Laura, who bears more than a passing resemblance to her.* ForTheEvulz: In the book, Grenouille wonders why he wants to rule humanity and concludes that it's because he's thoroughly evil. In the film, however, it's suggested that he wants to prove his worth despite lacking a scent.* GayParee: Parts of the story take place in Paris, though lower-class areas are [[TheDungAges pretty squalid]]. * {{Glamour}}: The premise of the story is that this is more than just figurative.* GoodScarsEvilScars: Grenouille's body is covered in scars and old burns from the tannery. His brutal master is particularly gruesome.* GottaCatchThemAll: In the film, Grenouille needs thirteen scents - each working in sequence, as the chords in a musical composition - to create his perfect perfume. Each of these scents comes from a beautiful woman. This also doubles as GottaKillThemAll: he keeps the scent, but discards the person it once belonged to.* GrossUpCloseUp: Grenouille smells a dead rat, giving us a close-up of the maggots inside. Thanks.* HardWorkHardlyWorks: Empowered by his super-human sense of smell, Grenouille is a vastly superior perfume maker than Baldini and even his more successful rivals, despite their decades of experience. * HeartIsAnAwesomePower: Having a greatly heightened sense of smell? Less meh than it sounds.* HeroAntagonist: Antoine Richis, played by Alan Rickman, is an effective community leader and loving father trying to stop Grenouille's rampage.* HeroesWantRedheads: Grenouille is most entranced by the scents of the Plum Girl and Laura, both redheads. * ImplacableMan: Grenouille tracks Laura across the countryside by smell, on foot, past all her father's defenses, right into her bedroom.* ImAHumanitarian: [[spoiler:After Grenouille empties his bottle of perfume over his head, a nearby crowd is so overwhelmed by Grenouille's concentrated beauty that they completely devour him ''out of love''.]]* LackOfEmpathy: Both Grenouille and Madame Gaillard are devoid of empathy, and the latter is described as almost completely dead emotionally and in terms of her sensory apparatus, hence why she doesn't feel revolted by Grenouille as others are due to his lack of smell.* LivingMacGuffin: Laura, bordering on MundaneMacGuffinPerson. She is the driving force of much of Grenouille's plot - by dint of nearing sexual maturity and smelling ''really'' nice. And that's about it. In the book she does literally ''nothing'' except get moved from place to place, [[spoiler:and then get killed.]]* LonelyAtTheTop: [[spoiler:Grenouille's completed perfume gives him the power to rule the world, but he realizes that it won't make him happy, so he commits suicide instead.]]* LoveIsInTheAir.* MadArtist: The central concept of the film: Grenouille makes the world's most beautiful perfume through murder.* MagicRealism: Grenouille's sense of smell, the fact that he has no body odour of his own, the lethal misfortunes of all his former keepers, and the effects of his perfume all breach the confines of either possibility or probability.* MeaningfulName: Grenouille means "frog."* MoreThanMindControl: The ultimate scent. At one point in the film, during the early stages of Grenouille's master perfume he tests a small drop of it on his hand, causing his vengeful, abusive employer to suddenly treat him with submissive politeness.* MummiesAtTheDinnerTable: After killing the Plum Girl, Grenouille strips her naked and smells her until her scent fades. One or two of his victims are found in the places they dwelled while alive; a rich girl is draped over her settee, a nun at the floor of the chapel.* {{Narrator}}: Creator/JohnHurt provides some excellent narration in the film.* NoNameGiven: [[EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep The Plum Girl]]* NonIdleRich: The wealthy officials of Grasse, lead by Antoine Richis, work uselessly to put a stop to the serial killer. * TheNoseKnows: The entire plot revolves around Grenouille's downright superhuman sense of smell.* ObsoleteMentor: Baldini teaches Grenouille a method to make perfume, but the method isn't sufficient for him, forcing him to go elsewhere.* OffingTheOffspring: Grenouille's mother was a fish lady who used to immediately kill all of her newborn offspring. Grenouille was loud enough to attract the attention of a customer, thus saving his life. His mother was executed for multiple counts of infanticide after the Parisian police investigated the matter.* OnlySaneMan: Richis is this, for being the only person in the city who knows that the killer is still out there. He's also the only person in the crowd to resist [[spoiler:Grenouille's perfume, until he comes too close, and it overpowers even him]].* OrphanageOfFear: Grenouille is raised in one of these. In the film, conditions are so bad that the other orphans try to kill him as a newborn to save room. In the book, the ''other'' kids are afraid of ''him'' due to his unnatural lack of smell. They still wish to kill him, but since none of them are actually brave enough to tough him, their attempts to smother him while he sleeps fail.* OverprotectiveDad: Antoine Richis, justified in that there is a murderer at large.* ParentalAbandonment: Grenouille's mother is executed for trying to kill him at birth. We never learn anything about his father.* PeopleJars: Grenouille puts a woman in a large glass vat in a failed attempt to extract her scent.* PervertDad: In the book, Richis certainly ''notices'' his daughter's beauty, staring at her for hours on end and even fantasizing about having sex with her. In the film, it seems he is merely overprotective because she's his last living relative.* PhotographicMemory: So to speak. In the book, Grenouille can perfectly remember every scent he ever smelled.* ProperlyParanoid: While everyone else in town is celebrating because the murderer was apparently caught, Richis goes to extreme lengths to hide his daughter alone in a hotel many miles away from town in a room without windows. [[spoiler:It still isn't enough.]]* ThePigPen: Grenouille is almost always covered in grime, especially when he is a penniless tanner's apprentice.* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: Antoine Richis sets about handling the serial killer crisis in an intelligent and logical manner, unlike everyone else.* RebelliousPrincess: A noble young lady recently arranged to be married to a man she barely knows, Laura flirts with being rebellious but ultimately obeys her father.* ReplacementLoveInterest: By the end it becomes apparent that Grenouille probably only went after Laura because of her resemblance to the Plum Girl, who he was originally obsessed with. * ScarilyCompetentTracker: Grenouille's sense of smell allows him to track people over miles of countryside and through twisty alleyways.* ShootTheShaggyDog: Grenouille was born as an emotionless misanthrope and spends his years wandering the country to find the perfect scent and complete his life's work. Everyone he comes in contact with has a habit of dying in short order, as if his very presence is toxic. He murders several girls to extract their scent, [[spoiler:but when he completes his mission he realizes not even ruling the world will make him happy and he returns to the place he was born to commit suicide. Ultimately all the destruction and misery he caused was pointless even to Grenouille and his inconsequential existence is summarily forgotten.]]* ShoutOut: The song "Scentless Apprentice" by Music/{{Nirvana}} from ''Music/InUtero'' was inspired by his novel. Music/KurtCobain liked it so much that he thanked the author in the liner notes.* TheSociopath: Grenouille certainly shows signs of it.* SerialKiller: As the subtitle of the book so helpfully tells us, this is a story about one. * SuicideByCop: [[spoiler:After realizing that his perfume will not grant him happiness, Grenouille uses the remainder of it to get some street riff-raff to eat him. The omniscient narrator of the book notes that they're all criminals.]]* SuperSenses: Grenouille's sense of smell is so strong that he can smell things like glass, replicate the exact formulae of perfumes, and sense incoming projectiles.* SympathyForTheDevil: Grenouille, when you realise that [[spoiler:he just wanted to be loved by someone, and the effect of the perfume is only an empty imitation of love]].* TortureAlwaysWorks: At least two other people are tortured into confessing to Grenouille's crimes.* TraumaticHaircut: Grenouille's victims are found with their hair shorn to stubble. Perhaps not so traumatic for the women themselves, who were already dead when it happened and thus past caring, but certainly adding to their debasement and their families' horror.* TrippyFinaleSyndrome: [[spoiler:Grenouille uses his completed perfume to cause the crowd at his execution to fall into a massive orgy. Later, he dumps the entire bottle over his head, causing a nearby rabble to ''eat him.'' Wow.]] * UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans: Grenouille wants to create a paradise on Earth with his perfect perfume, and he's willing to kill without remorse to get it. [[spoiler:When he finally makes the perfume, however, he finds the love that it grants him is hollow.]] * VillainProtagonist: Grenouille is a pitiless murderer and likely psychopath, but this is his story.* WantingIsBetterThanHaving: Grenouille spends most of the film creating the perfect perfume. Once he uses it, he decides that it doesn't really give him what he wants after all.----